Title Theft - Man Gets Notice, Someone Illegally Sold His Property - It Wasn't Him

[Account Closed]

Home title theft — a crime where someone steals a homeowner's identity to take ownership of a property — leaves property owners, like Gordon, without many options for quick reconciliation. And it's been happening with greater regularity in recent years. In Gordon's case, he was pulled in many directions over countless phone calls, and had a hard time getting a straight answer on how to move forward.

"There were several really odd things that had been ignored," he said. "The notary that they used was five-and-a-half hours away in an entirely different county from where the documents were signed."

Gordon lives in Phoenix, but the warranty deed recorded by the county — which was reviewed by Insider — had "Arizona" and "Pima" crossed out and replaced by "Texas" and "Bexar," a county almost 900 miles from Tucson

Real-estate agents in Arizona have seen a rise in fraud this year — especially for vacant land.

He was miffed that a document as crucial as a deed would not have a rigorous verification process for identification, he said. Title Security Agency did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.


https://www.businessinsider.com/mans-arizona-lot-sold-for-20...

[Chris Seveney]

Quote from @Account Closed:

Home title theft — a crime where someone steals a homeowner's identity to take ownership of a property — leaves property owners, like Gordon, without many options for quick reconciliation. And it's been happening with greater regularity in recent years. In Gordon's case, he was pulled in many directions over countless phone calls, and had a hard time getting a straight answer on how to move forward.

"There were several really odd things that had been ignored," he said. "The notary that they used was five-and-a-half hours away in an entirely different county from where the documents were signed."

Gordon lives in Phoenix, but the warranty deed recorded by the county — which was reviewed by Insider — had "Arizona" and "Pima" crossed out and replaced by "Texas" and "Bexar," a county almost 900 miles from Tucson

Real-estate agents in Arizona have seen a rise in fraud this year — especially for vacant land.

He was miffed that a document as crucial as a deed would not have a rigorous verification process for identification, he said. Title Security Agency did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.


https://www.businessinsider.com/mans-arizona-lot-sold-for-20...

 Reading more articles about this, and here are my initial comments:

1. The county is not out fault, as mentioned they are like the library. Not their responsibility to verify if the docs are legit. 

2. Title company - how did they not get a copy of the license / ID of the seller?

3. Realtor who sold the parcel - they should lose their license. We hold a lot of property out of state and every agent we work with we provide them with a license (and on land deals they did do a zoom call). 

This goes down to the agent and the title company in this instance and it should not be difficult to get the $ back, the title company is probably trying to wiggle a way out of having to lose $200k.